“Ma Chérie” is a short film depicting moments in the life of a trans woman seen through the eyes of a straight, cisgender man. He speaks to the audience about his transgender girlfriend, providing a glimpse into their relationship. In the film, I play the role of the transgender girlfriend. It was a penetrating experience for me, especially since I am myself a straight transgender woman. The film reveals a tender male gaze directed at transgender womanhood, much like that of the men who have loved me, the men who love me. Yet, I know too well that this male gaze is often laden with anguish and grief, brutal violence and murder, rejection and humiliation; from the cisgender male aggressor towards his transgender female victim. Sadly, in the regime of fragile masculinity, with every man there are misgivings. Is he ashamed of being seen with me? Does his attraction to me trigger insecurities about his manhood? I see those who are ashamed, and I sense those who are insecure. They do not see, perhaps, that they dehumanize me. They exorcise my soul and expose me to violence and desecration.
The normative straight male gaze imprisons all women. In this gaze a transgender woman, in particular, inhabits a very tenuous realm. The worth and value of womanhood is circumscribed by society to her physical body, as a composite object of male sexual fantasies, initiated early on through childhood exposure to sexualized cartoon princesses and brought to fruition through teenage masturbation to pornographic portrayals of the woman object. This woman object has worth not for her person, but for the curves and dimensions of the flesh adorning her figure, the orifices she possesses to be fucked, the pussy, the ass, and the mouth. A transgender woman disrupts this, with orifices unknown. Fragile masculinity is drawn yet ashamed, and often violence ensues. A trans woman may ‘pass,’ prompting repudiation only upon discovery of her genital anatomy. The discovery may lead to her murder at the hands of a horny American marine who picks her up in a nightclub, murder by drowning in the toilet bowl of a hotel bathroom. Another trans woman may not quite ‘pass,’ and be beaten to death till her head is split open on the streets of Manhattan by a man who catcalls her and then realizes she is trans.
“Ma Chérie” presents us with a male gaze that sees a transgender woman as a person and introduces us to her womanhood. This is of fundamental importance, because acknowledging transgender womanhood is granting womanhood the validation of personhood free of the trappings of flesh; a validation primarily reserved for manhood in the misogynistic matrix. In this benighted reality, the identity and worth of a man is deemed to lie in his person, while the identity and worth of a woman is deemed to lie in her body. Transgender womanhood poses an existential threat to this regime, and consequently elicits the wrath of the misogynistic enforcers. However, until we disentangle our identity and worth as women from our physical bodies, we will not have genuine and real equality. Can the annihilating and oppressive male gaze be recalibrated, refashioned, reclaimed, into and as one that beholds yet does not defile? In the words of the narrator of the film, “J’espère - I hope so.”
The full short film (6 minutes) is available to view here: